Get Your Brain Picked, and Reprogram the Haters

Have you ever read/saw anything online that made you feel dumber because the thing you saw was so stupid (yet you couldn’t look away)? Chances are you have because the internet is full of dumb stuff. Hopefully this blog is easing the pain of the being virtually surrounded by idiots. If you are looking for a heavy dose of intelligence I came across a great site that gets the job done. The site is called Brain Pickings and is described on the About page as:

a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why, bringing you things you didn’t know you were interested in — until you are.

The first article I came across on the site is The Benjamin Franklin Effect: The Surprising Psychology of How to Handle Haters and it’s a very interesting article. The majority of it is not actually about haters or Benjamin Franklin but it covers some psychological observations that I found intriguing. The article is a synopsis of a recent book called “You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself” by David McRaney. I have not read the book but I’m going to add it to my list. From the article’s synopsis, the author seems to cover a wide variety of topics related to how our mind tricks us, how we rationalize our actions based on our perceived image of ourselves, how we like people more that we do nice things for, an interesting tactic for dealing with haters, and lots of other things. The article is an intellectual piece of decent length (compared to some other quick news you might read online) but it’s worth it.